I spoke in Episode 127 of The Liberty Cast about three new bills introduced in the house that will further infringe on our right to keep and bear arms. First, we have H.R.8 – Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2021, then we have H.R.1446 – Enhanced Background Checks Act of 2021. Neither the text nor the summary is as yet available for H.R. 1454, but it is basically a bill that purports to close the so-called “ghost gun loophole”. And we will briefly touch on H.R.127 again. I’m doing this because wanted to put a little more meat on the bone with a deeper dive in to each of these unconstitutional bills, than I had the time to do on the show.
Let’s start with H.R. 1454. This bill was proposed by Representative Adriano Espaillat and seeks to amend Title 18 of the US Code to have firearm assembly kits reclassified as firearms. Most people who build guns using these kits don’t do it to sell to some gang banger or drug dealer. It takes far too much time and is not cheap. Not if you want to build a quality firearm. So why do they want to ban these? It’s not because there is a widespread issue with so-called ghost guns. They are rarely used to commit crimes. Rifles of any kind are rarely used to commit crimes according to the FBI Uniform Crime Report statistics. They want them reclassified as firearms because they want it on record that you own one so that they can put it in a registry and eventually confiscate it.
The other two bills introduced have to do with background checks. Let’s look at H.R. 8 first. H.R. 8, the Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2021 is essentially universal background checks. The left is incoherent and they resort to gaslighting when their inconsistent policies, positions and statements get called out. This bill is a manifestation of that incoherence. As an example, the way this bill is written, transfers between certain family members are exempt from the background check requirement if the transfer is a gift, meaning it is permanent and nothing of value was given in exchange. Let’s say a father gives his son a precision rifle to use in competition and somewhere down the line the son gives his father some cash for some other unrelated reason. Given the culture of spying on your neighbor being fostered by the government, what is to stop the feds from charging both the father and son with felonies for failing to conduct a background check and illegally selling a firearm? It’s really not hard to imagine any of the silly scenarios that could occur as a result of this bill. To take the incoherence a step further, the exemption applies to spouses, domestic partners, parents and their children, including step-parents and step-children, siblings, aunts or uncles and their nieces or nephews, and between grandparents and their grandchildren. Cousins is conspicuously missing from that list, but, I can gift a firearm to my aunt who can then turn around and gift it to her son. How does that make any sense?
Another aspect of H.R. 8 that makes no sense, is that it requires background checks for temporary transfers when the owner is not present while the borrower is in possession of the firearm. Imagine a soldier going on deployment or a family going on vacation and rather than leaving firearms in their home unattended for an extended period, they give them to a friend or neighbor while they are away. Under this bill, in such an instance, both the owner and the transferee have to make their way to an FFL to conduct the background check. Oh, and when the owner comes back, they have to have to go back to the FFL and do it all over again in order for the owner to reclaim his firearms. They are going out of their way to make it burdensome to comply with this law, seemingly with the intention of turning of law-abiding citizens in to felons.
H.R. 8 does not take in to consideration concealed carry permit holders. These people have passed a vigorous background check as required under H.R. 8 and a valid permit proves that they have done nothing to get it revoked or cause them to fail another background check. Statistically, concealed carry permit holder are the most law-abiding people in the country. Even more so than police officers.
The third bill recently introduced is H.R. 1446, Enhanced Background Checks Act of 2021. What this does is increase the time allowed for conducting from three days to ten. These delays also put people in danger. If someone is buying a gun because they believe that someone is looking to do them harm and they want to protect themselves, even the three day delay could prove deadly. The provisions in this bill allow for delays in processing a background check to take up to 30 business days. They have 10 business days to complete the background check. If there is no answer, the applicant has to petition the government for an explanation, and provide proof that they can pass the background check. Just like with red flag laws, this flips the burden on to the citizen to prove that they can pass the background check, rather than the government to prove that they should not allow the citizen to purchase a firearm. As written, the government has 10 more days to respond to the petition. After which if there is no answer, the dealer can transfer the firearm. Ask Carol Brown’s family how deadly such delays can be.
To the uninformed or people who no little to nothing about guns and the second amendment, these all sound somewhat reasonable compared to H.R. 127. Which was perhaps the point. It is such an over the top bill that it may serve as a mechanism to shift the Overton window to such a degree that other seemingly less egregious infringements could have an easier time passing. Regardless, we need to stand ready to fight for our Second Amendment rights, because once that goes, the rest will surely follow.